Saturday, December 25, 2010

Hodie Christus Natus Est!

Merry Christmas to our loyal and patient readers! Christ was born in a stable, but the Darwin house resembles the inn, with family rattling merrily around the new homestead. The vast swathes of paneling give the place a fine acoustic, which my sister (the opera singer) has exploited to fine effect. Every day reveals new facets of the house, both amazing and discomfiting, such as: there used to be a house phone! The ceramic heater in the bathroom still works! Out of four showers in the house, only one is fully operational! The downstairs bathroom door neither catches nor latches -in fact, only one of the bathrooms locks! Fortunately, it's the one with the working shower.

The home Internet connection won't be functional until later this week, and the iPad, for all it's toy value, is recalcitrant when it comes to typing much more than a sentence or two. (Witness, or rather don't witness, because you can't, the paragraph of inimitable prose it just ate as I tried to fix a minor typo.) We shall be back in form soon, and with photos to boot. What the move takes away, it restores: the memory chip to the digital camera, lost in the move from Texas, was discovered again in the midst of packing for Columbus.

We're about to settle in the library to watch A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version; Darwin will countenance no other). God bless us, every one!

Contributors

Reading

With the Catholic News sites discussing the Vatican's move to reform the LCWR, I pulled this slim volume written back in 1986 off the shelf to re-read. It's a quick and amusing read: a satirical view of the breakdown and renewal of reli...

I'd never read any Henry James before, though I did see the Nicole Kidman movie adaptation of Portrait of a Lady some years ago because... well, because it was a costume drama with Nicole Kidman in it.
This was one of those novels I ...

If you, like me, have been reared on tales of the second World War as the just and virtuous struggle of the "greatest generation", Evelyn Waugh's arch novels (based loosely on his own war experiences) are an important and darkly enjoyabl...

This was the first time in some years that I've re-read this Austen novel, one of the quieter and shorter ones, but one which has ranked among my favorites. It was striking me, on this pass, that it rather shows the effects of having be...